On Thursday, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to speak in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Donald Trump was “really looking forward to the hearings,” at least until this week, he told Sean Hannity Tuesday night.
“And then yesterday, I watched Trey, who I do respect, I think he’s a terrific guy, but he seemed to be doing a big pivot. He said, ‘Well, this isn’t about Hillary Clinton.’ You know, I’m pretty good at figuring this stuff out,” the amateur political detective who once appeared on an episode of Monk explained, “and he seemed to be doing, Sean, I’m sure you saw it, he seemed to be doing a big pivot away from Hillary Clinton. And I was trying to figure out what that was all about.”
Committee chair Trey Gowdy said on Sunday that people who keep saying that the Benghazi investigation is all about Clinton — or should be all about Clinton — need to be quiet. “I have told my own Republican colleagues and friends, shut up talking about things that you don’t know anything about,” he said on CBS News. “And unless you’re on the committee, you have no idea what we’ve done, why we’ve done it and what new facts we have found.”
Trump was worried all day about the Benghazi hearing losing all of its delicious Clinton filling. He told the Boston Herald on Tuesday morning, “I don’t want to make a prediction, but I think [Clinton] has a chance to have a pretty good day.” And as someone who knows good TV, he’s pretty sure this programming would be unbearably boring for his terrific fans.
“So you may not be as happy as you think with these hearings,” he told Hannity. “I just don’t know.”
Gowdy told Politico earlier this week, “The people who know me appreciate the fact that it is an impossible job … to run a serious factcentric investigation in a political environment. So the best you can do is keep trying.”
Meanwhile, Democrats on the Benghazi committee, who were not looking forward to a continuing Hillary-centric investigation, are thinking about resigning from the committee after Clinton testifies. Representative Adam Schiff told Reuters, “That, I think, is going to be a matter of our discussion after the hearing this week: How much longer does it make sense for us to continue to participate?”
Priorities USA, the main super-pac supporting Clinton, is running its first TV ad this week. It will focus on the Benghazi hearing. According to a recent NBC News/WSJ poll, 29 percent of Americans think the congressional investigation is fair; 35 percent weren’t paying close enough attention to have an opinion.
Oh, and in case you didn’t hear, did Trump tell you he has been waiting to watch Clinton testify for so long — and that it would be oh so disappointing if it was boring? “The hearings — I was looking forward to them.”
